New Year's Resolutions Suck

Greg texts me:
Happy New Year, Leahpeah! Any New Year’s Resolutions?

I text back:
Yes! No new resolutions!

I don’t mean to be glib. Far from it. I really, really mean it. I can’t count the amount of years I’ve set myself up for failure by promising to Quit Smoking by February 20th!* or Exercise 1.5hrs/day until I lose 20 lbs! or Keep my desk orgnizd! or Say 1 nice thing to everyone I meet! I mean, c’mon. That last one would get on everyone’s last nerve after two hours and that is before leaving the house.

One of my journals from around age 14 has a list of about 20 resolutions, which includes ‘not eating anything with fat ESPECIALLY chocolate’ and has twelve lines written under the word chocolate. The list also has ‘learn to like my family’ which everyone knows is a foolhardy wish at 14. There is some chemical imbalance at that age that makes your hair weird, your taste in clothes questionable and your affinity to family near non-existent.

Somewhere in my late-twenties I realized that the error was occurring in the making of the resolutions at the beginning of the new year. I am always on the path of finding better ways to be and live. I spend countless hours in my head figuring out how to do things in a more fulfilling and time efficient way, much to the detriment of many other things in my life including laundry and orgnizng my desk. So, I realized, that for me to put all this pressure on January 1 of any given year was stupid. My perfectionist personality is doing it 24/7 365 days a year already in every category including welding. The only way to top my natural state of crazy is to create even larger and more elaborate resolutions like Only walk in odd numbered steps or create one crocheted hat per 3 hour installment of free time, including those hours in front of TV in the evening but not including meditation time since my brain will be preoccupied with manifestation, internal healing and levitation, wherein ‘free time’ can include time on the toilet and time sleeping.

I don’t need any help being more crazy. I do it fine all on my own. And piling on New Year’s resolutions every first of the year only adds to the issue when not far behind comes the let down of falling short of my newly set outrageous goals.

I do well to just keep the main goals I’ve had for the past 5 years or so:

1. Do the best I can, all the time that I can.
2. Take good care of myself and others.

So, Hello New Year’s Resolutions! You suck and I will not be making any of you. At least until tonight around 3am when I’ll be hard at work figuring out a better way to de-lint the dryer.

* I did finally quit smoking a few years ago, but it was nowhere near a February.